Functionalist Theorists

Darwin's theory of evolution had a profound impact on early functionalist theorists in psychology. Functionalists attempted to objectify mental and behavioral processes in an effort to make psychology more scientific; by focusing on the empirically verifiable external manifestations of internal mental processes, functionalists hoped to make psychology a more exacting science. Functionalists of the Chicago school, following Darwin's focus on the adaptability of organisms, believed that a primary concern of the psychologist should be the adaptive significance of mental and behavioral processes. Psychologists and sociologists alike believed that social order and stability were considered analogous to biological equilibria, as societies, like individual organisms, adapted to their environments.

As Owens & Wagner (1992) point out in the introduction to their Progress in Modern Psychology: The Legacy of American Functionalism, "Even the elusive phenomena of consciousness do not exist in some kind of separate mental world, but rather they evolved to help humans and other organisms adjust to the changing conditions of the natural world. Since psychology is closely allied with biology, it is natural for psychologists to draw evidence from biology" (p. 7). The proponents of functionalism were increasingly concerned not only with immediate (proximate) function, but also with evolutionary (ultimate) function, epigenetic development, and the ecological adaptiveness of each and ever

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the biological sciences to explain analogous sociological phenomena. Psychologists using a functionalist perspective view all psychological phenomena from an "organic," evolutionary perspective. That is to say, all psychological processes, whether behavioral or mental, are adaptive. As Owens & Wagner (1992) assert, "The psychologist must always ask, How does this mental activity aid organisms in adjusting to a changeable world, or, more generally, in their struggle to survive? and What does this mental activity accomplish for the organism?" (p. 11). Darwinian (i.e. phylogenetic and adaptational) functions are the focus of evolutionary psychology, behavioral ecology, and sociobiology (Alcock, 1989, p. 50). The behavioral school of psychology (focusing on an organism's observable adaptational responses to the environment) has been most influenced by Darwin's theories. Although Darwin was conscious that genetic changes must occur in organisms over very long periods of time, he founded his theories upon the observable characteristics of species. These expressed traits, or phenotypes, developed as a result of adaptation and natural selection. In other words, an organism's interaction with, and response to, external stimuli pro

Category: Psychology - F